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Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Dream Dust

Writing isn’t a choice. It’s
a need, an urge much similar to the need to breathe. Denied air to
breathe, you suffocate. Denied means to write, an author wilts like a
plant in need of water.

Many
writers require certain things to be able to write.

Some
write anywhere.

A
story can be powerful enough to demand attention regardless of time
and place. Mine are rarely like that, but it’s easy for me to
imagine an author holding his wife’s hand while she’s in labor,
making a funny face like he’s eaten something he desperately needs
to pass, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other, glancing
around the room looking for an excuse and then carefully freeing
himself from the wife’s death grip saying “I’m sorry honey, but
I really need to get a couple of pages done.”

The
urge to write is always there, but most often our muses demand to be
appeased under specific circumstances which vary from author to
author. Mine isn’t a particularly easy one.

I
usually write in the morning or late at night. Stories are like
waking dreams, and they come more easily when I’m close to sleep. I
write on a laptop, rarely seeing the actual words. When a story takes
hold, this world melts away, becomes meaningless. All that exists are
the people in my head, characters made up of dream dust and disturbed
memories.

Writing
is a solitary sport and demands no spectators. I want peace and quiet
when I’m writing. Unless -

Unless
I’m travelling.

Moving
to an unknown destination at violent speeds lulls me to a dreamlike
state. In that state it’s easy to write even with other people and
noise around. When travelling, I scribble my muse’s will into a
notebook, blind to everything but the imaginary realm around me.

Alcohol
works the same way. It takes off the inhibitor being a part of the
waking world sets in between me and my muse, and allows me to hear
her will as clearly as I was still dreaming. I have a little ritual
connected with this particular feature, actually.

Whenever
a new story wants to start unraveling, I take a fresh notebook, go
to the nearest pub in the early evening, order a pint, open my
notebook, and write the first two or three scenes.

It’s
been like that with every book I’ve written, and I suppose it will
always be so. For some unknown reason, my muse is happiest when I
take her out of the house. During those moments, it’s not peace and
quiet she craves, but the life’s of the people around us.

I
work from home, and rarely see people outside my small circle. When
venturing outside with a fresh notebook and a story leaking out of my
fingertips, I need to see people I don’t know, people whose faces
might be perfect for the story, people who have secrets hidden behind
their eyes.

People
with bits and pieces I can, if not steal, at least borrow from. It
might be the way they smile that I need to take, the way they cock
their head when laughing, the way they give me the evil eye.

Little
things we usually ignore.

Little
things are the things that seem meaningless to the story and often go
unnoticed unless I go out and immerse in them. Little things to make
the story and its characters live, breathe like they were more than
dream dust.

Muses
are funny that way. They need and need and need, but at the end of
the day, the things they need aren’t that big.

A
bit of peace and quiet, surroundings changing, a few souls to suck
in.